• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Well... it's Trump... again. #47, here we go.

Swammerdami said:
If you'd asked me two decades ago how I felt about David Brooks, "Detest" might have been one of the first words to pop into my head. But with America's right-wing now plunged into the abyss of treason, hatred, greed, cowardice and hypocrisy, Brooks' recent speech seems like a pleasant breath of sanity and useful insights.
Click to expand...
Fuck Brooks. He helped normalize the new GOP. He wasn't a conservative, he was an apologist for the GOP. Hr just hid it better. These right wing assholes don't like that it has gone this far but they contributed much to this cause.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Swammerdami said:
If you'd asked me two decades ago how I felt about David Brooks, "Detest" might have been one of the first words to pop into my head. But with America's right-wing now plunged into the abyss of treason, hatred, greed, cowardice and hypocrisy, Brooks' recent speech seems like a pleasant breath of sanity and useful insights.
Click to expand...
Fuck Brooks. He helped normalize the new GOP. He wasn't a conservative, he was an apologist for the GOP. Hr just hid it better. These right wing assholes don't like that it has gone this far but they contributed much to this cause.
Click to expand...
You leftists and your purity tests! This is why we can't have conversatio- oh wait moderates do purity tests too because they will only ever choose the moderate option and nothing else, and dismiss anything that doesn't fit their idea of what moderate is as too extreme.
 
I shouldn't need to demonstrate my credentials as a Brooks-hater! I've already mentioned that as a subscriber to NT Times International Edition with their generous vacation plan, I wrote them and asked that I be on vacation for each edition that carried a Brooks opinion piece!

But although I've not been following Brooks, I think he opposed Trump throughout, no?

Anyway his speech makes a number of points, many of them "conservative" ideas, but I'm enough of a centrist to feel that the left lost its way by rejecting the unifying "big tent", and thereby helped criminal buffoons like Trump get elected.

Instead of the video, a transcript of Brooks' speech is available.

David Brooks said:
We [the educated elite] designed a meritocracy designed around the skills we ourselves possess and rigged the game so we succeeded and everybody else failed. By age 12, American children of affluent kids are four grade levels above everybody else. By university age, rich kids are 77 times more likely to go to university or die going to university than kids from poor schools. In adulthood, 54% of the people at elite workplaces went to the same 34 elite colleges.

So we ended up creating a caste system. People with high school degrees die nine years sooner than people with college degrees. People with high school degrees are five times more likely to have kids out of wedlock. People with high school degrees are 2.4 times more likely to say they have no friends.

So we created a caste system, even though we pretend to be egalitarian. But the worst things we did were not material. America has a very strong economy. The worst things we did were spiritual. We privatized morality and destroyed the moral order. George Marston is a great historian who said, what gave Martin Luther King’s rhetoric its power was the sense there’s a moral order built into the universe.
. . .
We took that essential moral order that holds people together and we decided it’s up to you to find your own truth. Find your own values.

Back in 1955, a great American journalist named Walter Lippmann understood this was going to be a big problem. He said “if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outside the bounds of civilization.”

Since 2000, the number of Americans without close personal friends is up by fourfold. Since 2000, the number of people who say they are in the lowest happiness category is up by 50%. We’ve just become sadder.
. . .
So I’ve described three different things we educated elites brought you. We destroyed the social fabric through inequality. We destroyed the moral fabric through privatizing morality. And we destroyed the institutional fabric, what’s happening right now.
Click to expand...
 
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Degrees don't kill people. God kills people.
You can have my masters degree when you pry it out of my cold, stiff fingers.
 
ideologyhunter said:
You can have my masters degree when you pry it out of my cold, stiff fingers.
Click to expand...
Why would anyone do that?

“Oh my, he’s dead! And still clutching something … what is it?”

“It’s a DEGREE! I’m grabbing it!”

“Noooo! Don’t do it - look what it did to him!”
 
“rigged the game” seems to be doing all the work in that quoted text. Does he explain the rigging or present it as an obvious fact?

What happened to all those stories about poor kids who got themselves educated through their own hard work and a library card? The good thing about education is that one can typically have as much or as little one likes, depending on how much one values it.

Certainly some forms are “rigged” but it would seem to me that there are enough to satisfy virtually anyone’s desire to be educated to some degree.
 
Brooks wrote that?! Yeah, made a caste system, that was the whole fucking point! He defended building that for a few decades.
 
There is a measure of schadenfreude to be had, watching Trump voters learn that THEY are the fraud and waste that needs cutting.
It’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got, so we should appreciate it.
 
Elixir said:
There is a measure of schadenfreude to be had, watching Trump voters learn that THEY are the fraud and waste that needs cutting.
It’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got, so we should appreciate it.
Click to expand...
The GOP Senators have little stomach for gutting Medicaid like the House wants to. They seem to understand better just how much it'd impact their base. The House GOP has swigged down so much poison, they think only the blacks and browns benefit from Medicaid.
 
Elixir said:
There is a measure of schadenfreude to be had, watching Trump voters learn that THEY are the fraud and waste that needs cutting.
It’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got, so we should appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I suppose schadenfreude fits, in that it's darkly humorous to see people voting directly against their own interests. But I won't enjoy seeing working class Trumpies, including the chronically ill, the aged, the veterans, the students, the impoverished, see their quality of life eroding because of Musketry. However, until there's real hurt done to the non-billionaire classes, Trump's spell over them will stay strong.
 
ideologyhunter said:
I won't enjoy seeing working class Trumpies, including the chronically ill, the aged, the veterans, the students, the impoverished, see their quality of life eroding because of Musketry.
Click to expand...
I enjoy seeing the first cracks appear.
Repug legislators are starting to see their willing victims show up at public events to complain. It’s going to get more and more difficult to keep them in line. Blaming Kami, Hillary and the Black Guy for everything won’t work forever. Maybe everything can be Schiff and Newsome’s fault for a few years?
Regardless, I am resigned to hardening my heart to those dumfuk trumpsuckers. I have animals that are better people.
 
Elixir said:
ideologyhunter said:
I won't enjoy seeing working class Trumpies, including the chronically ill, the aged, the veterans, the students, the impoverished, see their quality of life eroding because of Musketry.
Click to expand...
I enjoy seeing the first cracks appear.
Repug legislators are starting to see their willing victims show up at public events to complain.
Click to expand...

Oh please, those are just democrat plants, paid by George Soros to stir up trouble. RiGhT??? Jesse Waters tells me so...
 
Uh oh..... Just found out another issue if the tariffs go into place

It turns out that Viagra is manufactured in Ireland. Could retaliation lead to the Irish having the US by the blue balls?
 
ideologyhunter said:
Elixir said:
There is a measure of schadenfreude to be had, watching Trump voters learn that THEY are the fraud and waste that needs cutting.
It’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got, so we should appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I suppose schadenfreude fits, in that it's darkly humorous to see people voting directly against their own interests. But I won't enjoy seeing working class Trumpies, including the chronically ill, the aged, the veterans, the students, the impoverished, see their quality of life eroding because of Musketry. However, until there's real hurt done to the non-billionaire classes, Trump's spell over them will stay strong.
Click to expand...
I don't give two shits about them.
 
marc said:
Uh oh..... Just found out another issue if the tariffs go into place

It turns out that Viagra is manufactured in Ireland. Could retaliation lead to the Irish having the US by the blue balls?
Click to expand...
Can you suffer from such an affliction if you need Viagara?
 
GenesisNemesis said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Swammerdami said:
If you'd asked me two decades ago how I felt about David Brooks, "Detest" might have been one of the first words to pop into my head. But with America's right-wing now plunged into the abyss of treason, hatred, greed, cowardice and hypocrisy, Brooks' recent speech seems like a pleasant breath of sanity and useful insights.
Click to expand...
Fuck Brooks. He helped normalize the new GOP. He wasn't a conservative, he was an apologist for the GOP. Hr just hid it better. These right wing assholes don't like that it has gone this far but they contributed much to this cause.
Click to expand...
You leftists and your purity tests! This is why we can't have conversatio- oh wait moderates do purity tests too because they will only ever choose the moderate option and nothing else, and dismiss anything that doesn't fit their idea of what moderate is as too extreme.
Click to expand...
Right? Everybody hates us centrists. They trash us, and then lay claim to our centrism!
Left and right, we're on everyone's shit list.
 
Elixir said:
GenesisNemesis said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Swammerdami said:
If you'd asked me two decades ago how I felt about David Brooks, "Detest" might have been one of the first words to pop into my head. But with America's right-wing now plunged into the abyss of treason, hatred, greed, cowardice and hypocrisy, Brooks' recent speech seems like a pleasant breath of sanity and useful insights.
Click to expand...
Fuck Brooks. He helped normalize the new GOP. He wasn't a conservative, he was an apologist for the GOP. Hr just hid it better. These right wing assholes don't like that it has gone this far but they contributed much to this cause.
Click to expand...
You leftists and your purity tests! This is why we can't have conversatio- oh wait moderates do purity tests too because they will only ever choose the moderate option and nothing else, and dismiss anything that doesn't fit their idea of what moderate is as too extreme.
Click to expand...
Right? Everybody hates us centrists. They trash us, and then lay claim to our centrism!
Left and right, we're on everyone's shit list.
Click to expand...
Everybody's on my shitlist. Nothing personal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom